A Second Chance
by Marnie
Summary: In Tortuga Norrington receives a death omen, or a second chance... or maybe just an hallucination. Shame he's too drunk to decide which. Features James Norrington and Andrew Gillette deceased


He had eyes full of laughter. I remember that – the way he faced everything, the whole world, life and death and the storm, as if it was a joke and he the only one privy to the punch-line. Secret, smug, superior laughter.

Too many times I wanted to call him into the Great cabin, push him face down over the dining table and take him, will-he nill-he, just to see whether that would wipe the smile off his face, or broaden it.

"What makes you think you'd have ended up on top?"

I try to ignore him. I'm slumped in the darkest corner of the darkest drinking den in Tortuga, wet rushes under my cheek. A mix of blood and beer and vomit drips from the cracked table that shelters me, and soils the unravelling curls of my wig. In these circumstances it surprises me not one whit to see the form of Andrew Gillette sitting at the bar in his shore leave suit, his faintly transparent hand curved about a faintly transparent tankard.

I'm not surprised. I'm hurt, with a pain that begins like congealed lead in the belly, fills with ice all the vessels within and terminates beneath the breastbone in a hollow as though a cannon ball had torn its way through. I pity Barbossa's pirates now. I know what it is to be alive and yet dead at the same time. All my choices have been taken away, yet still they haunt me.

"That's just the word, sir."

If this ghost is conjured from my guilty thoughts, no wonder it is half dressed, coatless, without neckcloth or wig. I never told him how often I stalked him to see him like this; how often I woke deliberately in time to invade the wardroom during that blessed half an hour when he would stumble, dishevelled and drunk with sleep, out into a new day. He'd call for coffee, sit slumped in his shirt sleeves with his clever white hands knotted in his hair as he fought to open his eyes.

I would pour the coffee, and watch. Caribbean sunlight caught in russet, gold and cinnabar curls. The sound of feet on the deck above, and wind in the rigging, the rush and chuckle of water down the side. Light spilling down the stairs, into the scent of bacon and sausages and skilligalee. At some point the hands would come down, pull a full cup towards him and he'd sit a moment longer, breathing in the steam. And then look up.

In that early morning moment I would see his face smooth and solemn, free of defensive irony, free of mockery and pride, and I would be taken aback, every single day, by the realisation that I had forgotten how handsome he was. He hid it well, under a range of antic grimaces that held their own fascination. Those who saw him later in the day saw only the mask, only I saw his face naked and beautiful. I liked it better that way – to keep it my secret, the thing that only I had the wit to notice or the right to see.

"And what good did it ever do you?"

I can't… I can't bear him watching me. Not here. I murmur "Don't…" and even the whisper is loud in the closed up pub. My fellow dossers, rejects, human flotsam, do not stir however. The sound of misery is their constant lullaby. "Andrew, don't."

He had a smile he reserved for me too. Scarcely more than a blush of heat in eyes brown and comforting as a shot of rum. A slow upward quirk of lips into an expression so warm I would prickle all over with sweat when he turned it upon me. He does it now, perfectly visible even though the doors and windows are shut and the candles out. It's pitch black in here, but a different sun shines upon him and runs from the edges of his image like honey as he shifts with that lazy, liquid way of his.

"I got you to talk to me," he says, smug again.

"No more." I'm losing my mind, but it's my heart I fear for. I tried to give it to Elizabeth. If she'd taken it… if she'd only loved me back… I might have been safer from this. God above! Was there no escape from the obsession even in hell? "No more, Andrew. Please."

"Stop now and I'll only haunt you until you start again. You may as well have it over with."

"What happened to 'Sir'?"

He laughs, and it's boyish, like I remember, but there's something new in it, something carefree I've never heard in his voice before. "No ranks in death, James. Nor in Tortuga. You'll have to talk to me man to man."

It would be dishonest to blame the drink for the pictures that flash into my mind at the phrase 'man to man'. Dishonest to blame it for the way everything in me tightens and throbs, and I am forced to swallow down spit, my mouth watering. It would not be dishonest, however, to protest that what lay between us was not lust. Not _only_ carnal need and deprivation, the black itching frustration that—in want of a woman—can turn a man to the nearest available option. Not just lust. But what?

He certainly followed me like my shadow. Always there, always ready to put my will into action, to obey or cheer or goad as I required, to be my bulwark against the world, my right hand, the sword that hung by my side… Oh dear God!

I could have loved him if I'd dared. No, that's not true either. I did love him. I simply dared not admit it, neither to him nor to myself. And I never knew what I meant to him. I never will, now.

"You could ask me."

"You're a dream. A figment of alcohol and regret. You'll tell me what I want to hear. Or what I most fear. Either way you will only be an echo of my own wretchedness."

He sits up, linking his hands in his lap. That private sun of his shines behind him and filters through his linen and his hair, edging him in glory. His shoulders are wide and strong. I think I ought not to find this attractive, but 'ought not' no longer has the power over me that it used to. So many things I have done recently that I ought not to have done.

"Let me ask you a question instead, then. Let me ask what I am here to ask. Should I wait for you?"

"What?"

"I thought I'd end up in a hotter place," he says. And this is a new smile. Always something bitter clung about him, but this is sweet, and I wonder suddenly how there can be anything new in a mere phantasm built from memory. Surely I would not have conjured him up _changed_?

"But you should see this country. The trees. The fruit that practically bends down to your hand. The ocean. There's a great ocean, wide and dark, and boats that sail it, and I've a powerful yearning to get in one and explore this sea. But I want to know if I should wait for you."

A trickle of chill up my back. Nor was that what I might have expected him to say. Blame, yes. Reproach, yes. Not invitation. Invitation to what?

"I might…" I sail forward gingerly as if into ice. "I might be years yet."

"No." He's beside me suddenly, and the gold limned fingers prickle like 's fire against my cheek. "I'm dead, James. I see things the living can't see. Past and future, destiny, defeat and victory. You don't have long."

A heave goes through my body as though to vomit up bad meat, but I don't know what I feel. Disbelieving, horrified, relieved. "If it's that soon, why do you need to ask?"

The apparition kneels by my side, and for a moment I feel Andrew's presence so strongly that I scramble up and lean into him, expecting to feel strong arms, warmth, boiled wool waistcoat and the scratch of midnight bristle. And there's nothing there. Nothing but lines of light, and a whisper.

"I can wait for you. Easy. What I need to know is whether that's what you want; whether you want to finish now what we so singularly failed to start."

I itch all over—one doesn't stay in Tortuga long without picking up fleas and lice along with the dirt. But the cold fire in him makes me feel clean again. To shed this worthless body and set out, with him, on a voyage to find a new home….

"The Devil sent you to tempt me."

His laughter stirs the hair on the nape of my neck like fingers. "Only if it's the Devil's business to give love a second chance."

I don't know what the Devil's business is, but it seems to me there is little further I could fall. Doubt is not the Royal Navy's way, nor have I ever been criticised for a lack of enterprise, so I tangle my fingers in ghostly hair and cram his mouth against mine by way of saying "yes."

It's like kissing the storm—lightning and cold and speed and tearing darkness. Terror and wild, wild joy that breaks me open and rushes out, exulting.

And then I wake, and it's the morning. A pirate has stolen my shoes while I slept. I don't know whether I've really been given hope, or I've just perfected my own despair. I think…. I think…that I badly need another drink.


End file.
